Pursuing it with eager feet / Until it joins some larger way

The Solidarity of Humanity

At Christina’s graduation ceremony at Chico State on Saturday, a graduating senior from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts spoke about the need to remove the “filters” through which we view the mass of humanity that surrounds us. When we look at people we need to see them not as white or black, not as feminists or environmentalists, democrats or republicans, conservative or liberal. We need to see them simply as humans, just as we are, inheriting the same human condition that we do.

Frankly, I did not expect to have a favorable reception for any of what was said on the platform that day (other than the three words “Christina Lynn Lord”!), so I was surprised when the speech actually resonated with me.

I am currently reading Michael Horton’s Introducing Covenant Theology, and, Lord willing, I will be blogging through it in the coming weeks. In the first chapter, Horton condemns Western individualism, saying that covenant theology requires “our solidarity with all of creation especially our being ‘in Adam’ by virtue of the creation covenant and ‘in Christ’ in the covenant of grace” (16). He goes on to explain that “all of creation, especially all humans, stand already in a relationship to God as creator and judge in the covenant of creation. We all are bound together ethically in mutual responsibility. Each person, Christian or not, bears God’s image, and we can work side by side with non-Christians to fulfill the scriptural command to show love to our neighbors” (17). Through God’s providence, these are the same things that young lady said while the love of my life was graduating from college, and they are the same lessons we learn when we develop a worldview through the covenant framework that Scripture gives us.